


Acting Familiar

by Highsmith (quimtessence)



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon Queer Character of Color, Canon Queer Relationship, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Cute Immortal Husbands, Ficlet, Immortal Husbands, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Temporary Character Death, The Author Striving for Historical Accuracy and Hoping for the Best, Turkey - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:27:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25229827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quimtessence/pseuds/Highsmith
Summary: They lock eyes with the scent of the felt heated under the Nicaean sun in Yusuf's nostrils.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 24
Kudos: 276





	Acting Familiar

**Author's Note:**

> I have only seen the film. I have no actual knowledge of the comics. Title from Frank Ocean.
> 
> Now, Joe and Nicky met during the Crusades, but I'm not sure _which_ , therefore I will go with my best guess (and what most works for my plot). I'm setting this to start in the days before Nicaea's surrender about two years after the Pope speaks on the First Crusade, because 1097 is as good of a year as any.

They lock eyes with the scent of the felt heated under the Nicaean sun in Yusuf's nostrils. Missing the blue-green of seawater, so very different from the lake upon whose shore the city lies, narrows down from nostalgia to a faint musing on a pair of bright eyes fixed on his for a long, hanging moment ending once a decisive drawing of a longsword startles him out of his brief reverie into drawing his own blade.

Blood is hot when so much of it gushes out at once. It dampens the felt around his body, spraying out onto his sword arm to seep into his sleeve and moisten the skin beneath.

Later, washing up in a public fountain not far from where he has slain his enemy, surrounded by his fellow soldiers doing much the same, Yusuf forgets to roll his sleeve, the wool already dried anyway. Blood doesn't stain skin, but it does harden, thus scraping it off in flakes with a nail at dusk in lieu of bathing at the nearest fountain, now contained within enemy territory, becomes his only option to clean his arm of any remaining trace of said enemy.

Yusuf felled him, and now he must wash himself of him. But just as the look lingered between them, so does the memory in his own head, and in his dreams. Dreams which are much too vivid in the dead of night as in the brightness of day.

Glassland turned to hay meadows outside the city gates greets him when they are, merely a few days later, driven back into the depths of the continent as the city surrenders. By then, the dreams have not yet ceased.

*

It was never his city. But he mourns the loss anyway. His own town, salt in the air and sand beneath his feet, is as surely in the past as his slain enemy is. Except for the dreams, but no man can control his dreams, and Yusuf is but a man. A man who may easily perish before a new day dawns.

Reaching the outskirts of Şarhöyük three days later, they camp outside of it near a freshwater source. He's cleaned his arm many times over by now, but he can still feel the heated gush of life leaving its traces on him. In another life, he may have been a poet.

Time passes. The enemy arrives to camp on the north bank of the river. Yusuf expects them to cut them down soon after, so they need to charge in at dawn before they can, which they do before sunlight has properly spilled over the horizon. The knights dismount to protect their own, but Yusuf breaks into their battle line, and there, bloodshed everywhere around them, his sight lingers for a fraction of a second upon a pair of blue-green eyes. Too long. The arrow pierces him from behind, and he crumbles to the ground, felled finally.

*

He wakes farther down the river than where he died, dragged outside of the fighting by his once-passed enemy, who is currently staring at him not so much in awe as in mild confusion and something else Yusuf cannot quite define, all from a safe distance away.

He has, naturally, some questions. They both do.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm working through some stuff with these two. Please join me as I write historical fan fiction of people who never existed set in history which, uh, does.
> 
> Kudos/comments, as always, greatly appreciated.
> 
> Tumblr: [rhubarbdreams](https://rhubarbdreams.tumblr.com/)


End file.
